Easter People or the Walking Dead?

Dear old and new friends, In 19th-century America there was actually an organization called “The Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive.” Good Friday and Easter Sunday are excellent days to use your imagination to feel the suffocating awareness of being confined inside a narrow box buried under six feet of dirt! In past centuries that had been the tragic fate of some before the medical knowledge developed that could determine the difference between a coma and death. Before the era of embalming, our first president George Washington, fearful this might be his fate, ordered he was not to be buried until three days after his death. At that time you could purchase an Escape Casket constructed with a hollow eight-foot long pipe with a warning bell at the top to which was attached a rope going down into the casket. Such Escape Caskets should be sold today! A glance at our society shows the need of a revival of The Society for the Prevention of People Being Buried Alive since many are entombed alive by their life work. They are buried not under 6 feet of dirt but beneath the tons of pressure to meet deadlines and expectations. Those interned alive include members of all professions, the arts and even non-profit organizations. Religion also sepulchers its clergy and believers in shroud wrappings of “shoulds.” The darkness of this mausoleum prevents believers from seeing the validity of other religions. Easter is not about an event thousands of years ago—it is about today! Easter cries out to those who have buried themselves alive, “Wake up and live a full life.” It shouts loudly to the Walking Dead, those who cynically maintain that after death there is only nothingness, and also to all of us whose destination is the grave, “Remember the dead crucified carpenter of Galilee who heard Easter’s voice to arise—and did!” He wasn’t resuscitated to his former life but was raised up into a totally new and endless existence. Created by Divine Love, we were given a destiny to become fully human by following Jesus through death to the last stage of our evolution—endless Life. At this very moment this beautiful evolution is unfolding in us, and those awake to living in this miracle in their daily lives are the Easter People. They confidently can say, “I am, I shall be, and I shall continue to be forever.” The saintly Russian Baroness Catherine Doherty, founder of Madonna House, said, “One day I shall wake up and I shall realize that I have lived in the splendor of God’s life within me, the likes of which I never understood.”

The Good Friday Victory Snake Dance

Dear old and new friends,

The Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died in a Nazi concentration camp, said, “The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.” Indeed, the Crucified Christ seems the most un-American of images, for it proclaims that God prefers defeat to victory and is able to work more good from failure than from success. The Victory Snake Dance of Calvary celebrates the victory of: Evil over Good War over Peace Violence over Nonviolence Hate over Love Injustice over Justice Greed over Charity The Powerful over the Weak Whenever the vulnerable are suppressed and exploited, even in the name of the common good, or a just cause, or the bottom line, or orthodox theological correctness, the Snake Dance Victory of Good Friday is repeated. Whenever great rejoicing follows military victories in which multitudes of the innocent are slaughtered, or financial victories in which employees and stockholders are left penniless, the Snake Dance Victory of Good Friday is repeated. Whenever Religion is victorious because heretics are burned at the stake, or those who speak truth about science or theology are silenced “to protect the simple beliefs of the faithful,” the Snake Dance Victory of Good Friday is repeated. Whenever politicians and governments have defeated the opposition by creating anxiety about criminals, or have catered to greed with inappropriate tax cuts, or appeal to flag-waving nationalism instead of justice and peace, the Snake Dance Victory of Good Friday is repeated again.

Soul Talk

Dear old and new friends,

When you’re about to tell some secret, you are often admonished, “Now don’t tell a soul about this!” This folk phrase raises some intriguing questions. Do you talk to others’ souls or even to your own? Your ideas about the soul likely will be tainted by early Christian spiritual writers influenced by Greek philosophy that viewed the “psyche”—soul—as a separate spiritual entity from the body. The body was only an earthy, tainted container for the psyche until death freed the spirit. This Grecian dualism results in a perpetual conflict between the spiritual and material. Christian belief flows out of the Jewish “nepes”—or spiritual principle of life—where body and soul are intimately one with the spirit being created at the same time as the body. These days before Saint Patrick’s Day on Sunday are festooned with green decorations and shamrocks encouraging us to reflect on the Celtic Irish ideas of the soul. In the spirituality of the Emerald Isle the soul contains the body, not the other way around. Your eyes are the portals of your soul and your face is its reflection outward to the world. The soul loves poetry, music and lyrical verse, and since it is intimately one with the body, your feelings and emotions are soul-bound and soul-fed. These animated old Irish ideas of the soul reflect those of the Hebrew Psalmist whose psalm-poems speak of one’s soul being pierced with pain, consumed with longing, gladdened with joy and downcast in sorrow. Today the soul is commonly considered to be the totality of the self as a living conscious subject. But what are your thoughts about the soul? Do you believe you have a soul? Do you believe since your conception it has been seamlessly united with your body to remain so after you die? Or is it only an ancient term for life and human consciousness? Whatever your thoughts, can you imagine talking to your soul? One thing for sure, talking about or to your soul would make you more conscious of its invisible mysterious existence. If you care to experiment, the following examples can be a beginning of your own Soul Language Lexicon. *Coming home tired: “Oh, my poor weary soul, I’m dead on my feet.” *During a long sermon: “My sorry soul aches for him to stop preaching.” *Upon winning anything: “O my soul, dance with joy—I’ve won!” *Finding place to park: “Look, my soul, an empty parking space. God is good!” *Awakening at dawn: “O my soul—I’m alive! I’ve been gifted with another day.”

Emancipation Anyone?

Dear old and new friends, One hundred and fifty years ago in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all African slaves in those territories still at war with the Union. This anniversary year presents an opportunity to ask ourselves if we are free or enslaved—or perhaps both? That state of being free while enslaved is the condition of anyone addicted to anything: tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling, and that most admirable addiction workaholism. Those in bondage by any of the above are usually aware of their condition. However, there is an unconscious enslavement that encompasses almost everyone except small preschool children. In his book Walking on Water, Anthony de Mello says, “The most wearisome slavery in the world is worrying: ‘What sort of impression am I making on others?’ It pushes people to try to look intelligent, charming, generous, etc. Do you know someone who is like that? Can you realize that a president or a pope who acted like that would really be a slave?” This enslavement typically begins in the self-conscious teen years and becomes full grown by high school where everyone is judged on exterior appearances or abilities. These bondage chains don’t magically drop off at graduation, if anything they grow larger as the graduates entered our highly, competitive adult world. A fortunate few by personal effort or physiological assistance find freedom, yet their old chains are never very far away. Whenever they are center stage, giving a talk to a group, leading a meeting or being a member of a bridal party, they once again feel the tight constriction of their old slave chains. A convert from Judaism who died in a Nazi concentration camp gas chamber, the German mystic and saintly Carmelite nun Edith Stein, wrote, “Real spiritual transformation can only begin when we relinquish our positions as the center of things!” This discerning insight of hers challenges all seeking wholeness and holiness to ask, does my present position prevent me from that which I seek? Does this insight of St. Edith Stein mean that entrance into even the Kindergarten of Spiritual Maturity requires emancipation?

Edward Hays

Haysian haphazard thoughts on theinvisible and visible mysteries of life.